While many of the features of MobileMe are simply being upgraded in the move to iCloud, Apple has previously noted that Gallery, iDisk and iWeb are on the chopping block. Now, the company has further made it clear that data sync features will also be canceled in its iCloud transition steps.

A key feature of .Mac and later MobileMe was the cloud integration of iSync, Apple's Mac-centric tool for keeping data in sync among a variety of devices as part of its "digital hub strategy" first unveiled a decade ago. The data sync of .Mac and subsequently MobileMe moved the "truth database" from the user's Mac into the cloud, making it possible to sync additional types of data between Macs.

MobileMe currently allows a user to sync a variety of settings between Macs, including the layout of Dashboard widgets, Dock items, passwords and credentials saved in the Keychain, email account information including Mail Rules, Signatures and Smart Mailboxes, and System Preferences.

However, all of these features will terminate as soon as a user migrates from MobileMe to the new iCloud, according to Apple's transition pages at me.com/move.

Other MobileMe features that are not being carried forward into iCloud, including Gallery media hosting, iDisk cloud storage and its integrated iWeb web hosting, will be continued for exiting MobileMe subscribers until June 30 of next year, even after migrating other data to iCloud. These features are easy to maintain independently from iCloud, because there is no direct equivalent in iCloud.

Gallery media hosting is being dramatically rethought as Photo Stream, a push updating feature that presents a user's photos on the mobile devices, Mac photo albums, and on Apple TV rather than via a web site. Similarly, iDisk is making way for an entirely new type of document and data updating that focuses on a users' own hardware rather than web-centric hosting.

The iCloud migration process is currently only open to developers, as it requires users to have iOS 5 beta 5 on their mobile devices, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 with the iCloud for Os X Lion beta 6 package on their Macs, and the iCloud Control Panel for Windows beta 4 running on any PCs they use.

Why the long phase?

Apple's discontinuation of data sync in iCloud is curious, particularly for Keychains and System Preferences, although the company may have plans to delegate such features to third party app developers.

Mail accounts have been overhauled enough in Mac OS X Lion that a continuation into iCloud might involve too much additional work; mail accounts are now being presented differently in Lion, which integrates external accounts across "Mail and Notes," "Calendar and Reminders," Chat and Contacts apps, rather than simply associating email account information with Mail.

Similarly, Dock items are now expanded into Lion's new Launchpad feature, which could make it problematic to sync Mac OS X Lion items with other Macs running previous versions of Mac OS X.

Apple notes that while Mail, Contacts and Calendars can be migrated from MobileMe to iCloud, shared calendars may be affected in the move, while Bookmarks will simply be imported from a client system. This indicates the reduction in data supported in the transition to iCloud may largely be explained by Apple's hopes to keep the migration as simple and problem-free as possible, avoiding the issues users had in the move from .Mac to MobileMe.

Another reason for the shift in features between MobileMe and iCloud may be explained by the underlying security changes that differentiate the wide open iDisk from the carefully sandboxed design of iCloud's Documents & Data.

Currently, data synced to MobileMe by Mac OS X Sync Services is copied into openly accessible folders. It is likely Apple hopes to completely secure all iCloud data to avoid any embarrassing lapses and contain sensitive data from potential malware attacks. Individual apps, such as Keychain Access, Launchpad and System Preferences, may be modified in the future to take advantage of iCloud's key value data store, duplicating the old MobileMe features in a more secure fashion.

Apple have usage data that we don't have access too, maybe hardly anyone was using those other sync features? I think they're just trying to keep iCloud as simple and essential as possible, to make it easier to understand and increase adoption.

But actually, not so sure they have succeeded here. There is a saying in politics that if you have to explain you've already lost. And how painfully long did Steve spend explaining iCloud in his keynote?

To me this sucks for Mac people, when you look at the windows requirements, they get to use anything from vista forward, for us people that support Apple we have to be using Lion only. I have 2 machines at work that I can't load Lion on and have been using mobile me all this time to sync all my calendars, but not anymore thanks to Apple. They should give more flexibility to Apple users.

Apple have usage data that we don't have access too, maybe hardly anyone was using those other sync features? I think they're just trying to keep iCloud as simple and essential as possible, to make it easier to understand and increase adoption.

But actually, not so sure they have succeeded here. There is a saying in politics that if you have to explain you've already lost. And how painfully long did Steve spend explaining iCloud in his keynote?

I think understand iCloud is more about realizing that the attempt is for you to not have to worry about manually moving or selecting items to keep them in sync. It just happens and you never have to think about it.

In fact Lion as an OS seems to extol this ethos. We are being groomed to worry less about applications running or saving, presumably so that we can focus our efforts on the task at hand and let the computer do what it does best.

He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.- SolipsismX

In all the years I have had MobileMe (and all of its incarnations) I have never synced keychains, widgets, accounts, or preferences. I did use Gallery, iDisk and iWeb publishing, but only very lightly.

My biggest questions are on the limitations of Photostream. 1000 photos for 30 days? What does that mean?

How is Photostream anything remotely like Web Galleries? From my understanding, Photostream is not shareable. It's just your camera roll for the last 30 days. You would have to give someone your username or password to share your photo stream, or give them access to your Apple device. Even then, since it is just your raw camera roll, it's unlikely you would want to share your Photostream especially if it has naked pictures of your girlfriend or something equally sensitive that the majority of people probably have.

Since Mail Rules have been removed as a syncing feature, and since "the truth is in the cloud" is the motto of iCloud, why isn't anyone covering what features iCloud mail has that allow you to filter your email so that all devices are getting mail in the right places? Do we have to keep our Mac powered on at home to filter our email and sync it back up to the cloud so that we aren't getting hundreds of insignificant mail messages pushed to our phone? That is hardly "demoting" the Mac.

In all the years I have had MobileMe (and all of its incarnations) I have never synced keychains, widgets, accounts, or preferences. I did use Gallery, iDisk and iWeb publishing, but only very lightly.

I liked syncing keychains, widgets and Dock items because I would do a fresh install from time to time or when moving to a new Mac.

But I upgraded directly from Snow to Lion and the upgrade seems to have gone well, so I won't be doing, nor have time to do fresh installs nowadays. I like too many settings and apps just the way they are. Just having to reinstall and configure Adobe CS4 to my liking is half a day's work.

Also, if I need to reinstall or upgrade to a new OS I can just restore from a Time Machine backup. That too seems to work well.

So, it is a handy feature of MobileMe, but for my use June 30 2012 is when I can say goodbye without being too concerned. They may well integrate these into iCloud by then anyways, or it may be part of that "Internet Restore" thing for Lion which I don't quite understand yet.

Since Mail Rules have been removed as a syncing feature, and since "the truth is in the cloud" is the motto of iCloud, why isn't anyone covering what features iCloud mail has that allow you to filter your email so that all devices are getting mail in the right places? Do we have to keep our Mac powered on at home to filter our email and sync it back up to the cloud so that we aren't getting hundreds of insignificant mail messages pushed to our phone? That is hardly "demoting" the Mac.

FWIW Junk mail to MobileMe addresses identified at the Cloud level get filtered at the Cloud level.

That said, cloud services is arguably one of Apple's big weaknesses. They're just trying to take it step by step.

The exception being iTunes Store which seems to be quite robust. Not sure if it's a different team working on that instead of iCloud?

I think understand iCloud is more about realizing that the attempt is for you to not have to worry about manually moving or selecting items to keep them in sync. It just happens and you never have to think about it.

In fact Lion as an OS seems to extol this ethos. We are being groomed to worry less about applications running or saving, presumably so that we can focus our efforts on the task at hand and let the computer do what it does best.

Yes, you are right, these ideas are closely related. The ideal of the cloud is that you simply don't have to worry about your data. As soon as you create something it's just there, everywhere, always even if you haven't explicitly saved/named it. In Lion you can even reboot with an unsaved document and it will still be there when you restart.

I can't help but feel this is just the first step in something. Like ultimately every save dialog in every app will save two things: the document locally, and document metadata to the cloud. And then in the background as you are doing other things, documents/diffs will trickle across the network syncing everything up.

Once people begin to expect this behaviour, systems that don't have it will start to look very primitive indeed. This is where the open source OSes will have trouble competing -- no money for big server farms.

I only sync bookmarks, contacts, and calendars. Seems those will all be in iCloud

I do the same thing only I use Google to sync my bookmarks (Chrome browser) iCal (Google) Mail (Google) Docs (Google) Contacts (Google)...... all for free but waiting to see what iCloud can and might try it out.....

Tallest Skil:

"Eventually Google will have their Afghanistan with Oracle and collapse" "The future is Apple, Google, and a third company that hasn't yet been created."

Apple have usage data that we don't have access too, maybe hardly anyone was using those other sync features? I think they're just trying to keep iCloud as simple and essential as possible, to make it easier to understand and increase adoption.

But actually, not so sure they have succeeded here. There is a saying in politics that if you have to explain you've already lost. And how painfully long did Steve spend explaining iCloud in his keynote?

Simple for the user but they are coming out of the gate with a complex system. Steve introduced 9 core features of iCloud plus APIs for developers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbell52

To me this sucks for Mac people, when you look at the windows requirements, they get to use anything from vista forward, for us people that support Apple we have to be using Lion only. I have 2 machines at work that I can't load Lion on and have been using mobile me all this time to sync all my calendars, but not anymore thanks to Apple. They should give more flexibility to Apple users.

By the time MobileMe goes dark Lion will have been out a year and it'll be half a decade since PPC and Core Duo Macs were last sold. How many years should they wait for the stragglers to catch up? How about a full decade? How about 2 decades? How about they go back to the original Mac?

Quote:

Originally Posted by esummers

Some of this could come back through the more generic document syncing APIs. It makes sense to remove the legacy syncing methods.

Good point.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Photo Stream is in no way a rethinking of Gallery. I'm not sure there is a single thing these two services have in common. They are entirely different.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody

Curious???

wouldn't this rather obviously be the result of the fact that the sync has to work on two different OS's? I don't see what's surprising (or even mildly interesting), about this at all.

How so? All of the syncing in iCloud, such as documents, have to sync between different OSes. Keychain is just another type of document. If I have iWork on my Mac and don't have it on my iPad, then my iWork documents simply don't sync to the iPad. And if the other OS you are talking about is Windows, there's no iWork there, either. And Windows doesn't have iPhoto, and yet photos sync. MobleMe works now with multiple OSes.

So please explain why it's so obviously "the result of the fact that the sync has to work on two different OS's". That argument makes no sense whatsoever.

I do the same thing only I use Google to sync my bookmarks (Chrome browser) iCal (Google) Mail (Google) Docs (Google) Contacts (Google)...... all for free but waiting to see what iCloud can and might try it out.....

So Google knows every site that interests you, every appointment you have, every person you exchange email with and exactly what you say to each other and they even have access to the content of your documents. I'll bet you get remarkably well targeted advertising as you browse the web.

iCloud is about keeping personal data synced across multiple devices. I don't like the idea that Apple has access to everything I ever do, but unlike Google they make their money selling hardware not my data so there's a good chance they aren't reading it.

Gallery let users post selected photos for grandma to see. Photo Stream requires grandma to visit you or you to visit her and take your iPad/MacBook/AppleTV with you. By eliminating Home Page, Gallery and iWeb Apple has conceded the photo sharing market to Yahoo, Google and Facebook. I consider that a huge and unforgivable step backward.

Actually I don't understand Photo Stream at all. The photos that belong on a mobile device are those specifically selected for sharing with other people. The set automatically synced by Photo Stream has absolutely zero chance of representing the set I want to share.

Eliminating iDisk means no other document types can be shared either. Mac users who share documents will have to find third party alternatives. It seems very strange for Apple to be sending millions of users to competitors who have no qualms about selling our identities to the highest bidder.

Finally I'm worried about moving mail filtering to the cloud. No matter what anyone says email requires human filtering. My ISP incorrectly marks quite a few messages as spam. I don't know what MobileMe is doing, but I suspect they're blocking mail I'd like to see. I know there are issues trying to send email with attachments through MobileMe. It's a big enough problem than I only send plain text via Mobile Me and rely on my home ISP or the mail server at work to deliver messages with attachments.

How is Photostream anything remotely like Web Galleries? From my understanding, Photostream is not shareable. It's just your camera roll for the last 30 days. You would have to give someone your username or password to share your photo stream, or give them access to your Apple device. Even then, since it is just your raw camera roll, it's unlikely you would want to share your Photostream especially if it has naked pictures of your girlfriend or something equally sensitive that the majority of people probably have.

Since Mail Rules have been removed as a syncing feature, and since "the truth is in the cloud" is the motto of iCloud, why isn't anyone covering what features iCloud mail has that allow you to filter your email so that all devices are getting mail in the right places? Do we have to keep our Mac powered on at home to filter our email and sync it back up to the cloud so that we aren't getting hundreds of insignificant mail messages pushed to our phone? That is hardly "demoting" the Mac.

I agree on both points. Photo Stream is great for getting all your photos on all your Apple devices but it's pointless for sharing your photos with others which is what Web Gallery is all about. Once MobileMe ends, Apple will offer NO WAY to share full quality images with whomever you choose. That's not a good thing.

I certainly hope the new iCloud Mail will offer junk mail filtering unlike the current version of Mail. I get a significant amount of junk mail and currently must leave my Mac on to have it filtered out of my In Box. I find it a bit incredible that so few are asking if iCloud mail will feature junk mail filtering just like other free email services like Yahoo and Gmail.

[Web] Gallery let users post selected photos for grandma to see. Photo Stream requires grandma to visit you or you to visit her and take your iPad/MacBook/AppleTV with you. By eliminating Home Page, Gallery and iWeb Apple has conceded the photo sharing market to Yahoo, Google and Facebook. I consider that a huge and unforgivable step backward.

I couldn't agree more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bregalad

Eliminating iDisk means no other document types can be shared either. Mac users who share documents will have to find third party alternatives. It seems very strange for Apple to be sending millions of users to competitors who have no qualms about selling our identities to the highest bidder.

Again, I agree wholeheartedly. I happily paid for MobileMe because my data was safe, under my control and not being sold to third parties without my knowledge. Even though iCloud has some great features it's ditching WAY too much from what we've been enjoying for a decade or more with iTools, Dot Mac and MobileMe.

Two steps forward and one step back. Not much to get excited about. I expect more from Apple.

I imagine that it would be relatively simple for someone to come up with a "setup sync" program that will shove copies of your preferences and keychain into the cloud and sync between macs.

I never used preferences sync myself after moving from a Macbook to an iMac and an Air - I set them both up differently and sometimes options would clash.

That said, keychain sync was a great boon on rebuilds and new machines. One login/password for mobile me and I had all my WIFI passwords back, so I could leap straight on the net, and download dropbox/1password.

Photo Stream is in no way a rethinking of Gallery. I'm not sure there is a single thing these two services have in common. They are entirely different.

I agree. Haven't tested iCloud since I'm not a developer, but reading up on iCloud and its photo streaming I came to the conclusion that for Aperture users (I don't use iPhoto):

1. you are not able to create an album
2. share albums
3. password protect photo's
4. cannot upload original (raw) photo's
5. versioning
6. store more than 1000 photo's or keep them longer than 30 days, even if you increase your data cap
7. subscribe to RSS photo galleries
8. upload to other users' albums through email or a dedicated URL
9. show or hide version name or caption
10. manually set the pixel size of published photo's

And these are just the first 10 things that come to mind...

Of course I understand that:
1. iCloud is still in beta
2. things might be added before MM goes down next year
3. I don't know everything for sure since I'm not using/testing iCloud now

Will the iOS Gallery app be pulled from the store? Will they release a stripped down version of Aperture to remove all ties with Galleries? Installation is mandatory for all users who move to iCloud!

[…] iCloud can store both apps' documents and "key-value data," which could include application state (allowing apps on various devices to sync their behaviors, such as resuming the same playback point in a video player app on another device), settings and "other important information that delivers a better user experience. Although not as apparent to the end-user, key-value storage will be just as important as document storage," the site notes.

Individual apps, such as Keychain Access, Launchpad and System Preferences, may be modified in the future to take advantage of iCloud's key value data store, duplicating the old MobileMe features in a more secure fashion.

When I consider the loss of iSync, it hits pretty hard… I hope Apple provides some kind of in-OS replacement for all the features it provides… maybe something akin to the "back to my Mac" that would allow background Mac-to-Mac-to-iDevice synching…?

One example of a super-useful aspect of MobileMe calendar sync has been this: I use an iPad app called 2Do for task and project management, and it syncs handily with MobileMe Calendars… I assume they will be able to shift to iCloud for that, but what of my keychains, account info, preferences, etc?

I have really enjoyed keeping my bookmarks & keychains easily synched both on an ongoing basis (live updates across devices), and when migrating to replacement computers. It really has taken a lot of headache out of that, and kept me from losing critical data on more than one occasion…

They finally got it to the point of being really useful in a "good enough to take it for granted" sense… so hopefully similar functions will be restored as the iCloud advances through beta…

It's just the kind of stuff one likes not having to do manually, ya know?

I remember a rumor from a while back that your iPhone would be used to carry around your dock, system, and keychain info and that getting it in range of any Mac would make that Mac work and look like your own. Maybe this is why they are removing these features, because they would overlap and interfere with each other.

I really liked all these synch features, I hope they keep them in some form or other.

Technically, keychain sync can be implemented easily as a document sync for “Keychain Access” app. iCloud doesn’t care what data is being synched, so it is all doable. I really hope Apple will go this way.

I agree on both points. Photo Stream is great for getting all your photos on all your Apple devices but it's pointless for sharing your photos with others which is what Web Gallery is all about. Once MobileMe ends, Apple will offer NO WAY to share full quality images with whomever you choose. That's not a good thing.

I certainly hope the new iCloud Mail will offer junk mail filtering unlike the current version of Mail. I get a significant amount of junk mail and currently must leave my Mac on to have it filtered out of my In Box. I find it a bit incredible that so few are asking if iCloud mail will feature junk mail filtering just like other free email services like Yahoo and Gmail.

Exactly - photostream has NOTHING to do with the web galleries, and as such it isn't clear why Apple is killing the galleries. I got MobileMe based on the demo of how easy it is to share pictures with the rest of your family, and iCloud is a huge step backwards from what I can see. While getting photos on to my Mac is more cumbersome than it needs to be (which could have been solved with a back-to-my-mac based autosync or even just WiFi autosync when on my home LAN...), I've never even been worried about seeing a picture on my phone that I just took on my iPad. Not having my galleries, on the other hand, is a loss.

Setting up the iCloud account with my iTunes info is also going to be a problem - I had a separate MobileMe ID just so that we can share our iTunes account in the home and not have that linked to individual email. Now what? (Apart from moving mail off of MobileMe...)

I use keychain sync, and I sync mail sigs and mail rules. This makes it so convenient as a multi-machine user (laptop, home desktop, and work computer). In combination, all the MobileMe syncing makes my computers all work the same way with zero ongoing configuration by me. I was hoping with the addition of iCloud that model would be extended to document sharing as well. Seems like with iCloud it's a tentative half step forward and several full steps back.

Apple implementation of sync caused me constant problems with losing data,or double, triple, instances of same data. It appears it was never sure what was the master computer and which were the clones. Good idea poor implementation.